2. A Front From the North

Paul loads weapons together into a large trunk while Amy watches. He names them for her as he grabs them.

"This is a P-90," he says, putting two of them into the trunk. "It's an automatic weapon. Carries a fifty round magazine. I'll explain what that means later."

Amy nods. Paul can't tell if she actually understands or if she just wants to please him. He sincerely hopes that she isn't just playing along. It's terrible, but he still doesn't know how to read her. Jack seems to do it pretty well. It's like he can see something in her movements and expressions that Paul can't pick up on.

He can tell her sad from her thoughtful. It all looks the same to Paul. It's not that Paul isn't good with people. He is. Paul reads voices, tones, things between the lines.

Amy's got enough difficult getting her basic ideas on the lines, much less between them.

Jack comes into the cabin, sweaty but at least wearing a shirt this time.

"You two aren't gone yet?" asks Jack, sitting down on the bench by the door.

"Well, I thought we should start off by identifying everything before we got out there," Paul says. "Shouldn't you be doing this, though?"

Jack blinks. "I'm supervising."

"I know, but it's been a long time since I've had to train anyone, especially regarding firearms."

"Well, it'll be a good review for you then."

"And you're closer to her size, Colonel. No offense," Paul notes and looks very interested in the magazine clips he's putting next to the P-90's.

Jack coughs. "Not exactly."

"Of course, my mistake, sir," Paul answers with just the slightest hint of a grin. "I meant width wise."

"I know, I've just worked so hard to maintain my girlish figure," Jack answers. He doesn't smile before drinking, but Amy can't help but smile. "Do these fatigues make my butt look big?"

"I wasn't really looking," Paul answers. He turns to Amy. "This is a zat'nik'atel."

"You can just say zat if you want, saves time," Jack tells her. Paul looks up and looks at Jack and then Amy. He isn't sure if that was a joke or Jack being absently cruel.

Amy takes out her notebook. Z-A-T-N-I-K-A-T-E-L. Right

"Yeah, without the nikatel," Jack answers.

"Are you sure you don't want to do this, sir? I could finish the roof," Paul offers.

For a moment he stops and has to stop the mental vertigo going on in his head. He just called a fifteen-year-old sir without a moment's pause. And even as he thinks about it, it seems wrong not to call Jack 'sir'.

"Did everyone get up this morning before I did and make a pact to argue with me as much as possible?" he asks, getting off the bench. "Take some weapons, go out into the wilderness and don't come back until she knows how to kill people."

Paul smiles just a little. Of course it would be wrong not to call this man sir. And he is a man. He's still Colonel O'Neill, the survivor and the consummate rebel, even when he's at the top of the food chain.

And if he's in a smaller body these days, well, Paul figures that in five years nobody will know the difference.

"I just don't think I'm the person to do it," Paul replies and notices Jack staring at him, his eyes getting squinty and the wheels in his mind turning.

"Is there a problem here, Major?"

"Well, yes. No offense, Amy, but I'm not sure I know how to communicate with you well enough yet."

Amy looks more impatient than anything. She scribbles something and thrusts it under Paul's nose.

He looks down and reads, I can write in English, too.

Paul nods his head. "What happens when there isn't any time for you to write it down or for one of us to read it?."

"That's the point," says Jack. He goes towards the door. "Figure something out. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go supervise."

Paul can pretty much tell that whatever arguement they were going to have is over. So he sighs, shuts the trunk and latches it. "Get the other end of this."

Amy squints at the trunk and slowly it starts to rise. Paul can barely feel the weight of it anymore, with her taking up the other end.

Jack sticks his head back through the door, "With your hands, Amy!"

Amy rolls her eyes and lets the trunk down gently. The feeling of weight and pressure return gradually. Amy picks up the handle on the other end and starts towards the door.

By the time they're half a mile out, Paul looks over at Amy. Her teeth are gritted tight and he can feel her arm shaking. Every once and a while she tries to carry it two handed, but ends up tripping over herself.

Paul's arm is pretty tired, too.

She should've dropped the damn thing by now. Paul has no idea what Jack was thinking. It was a stupid idea, telling her to try to carry this thing with him when it would probably give Teal'c a hernia. Even stupider that Jack's stripping Amy of her only true advantage.

Paul stops. He drops his end. Amy drops hers.

"Slight change of plans," says Paul, looking around. "This looks like a good place to start."

Amy nods and shakes her arm.

"Are you right handed or left handed?" Paul asks, opening the case.

Amy opens her notepad, writes: Both.

Paul smiles. Okay, this is something. Communication. Quirky facts about each other.

"How long have you been able to do that?"

Since I got sick.

"Oh." Paul says and frowns. He's beginning to wonder if there's anything about Amy that isn't directly related to the virus. It makes him irritated. If everything about Amy is just going to be one big tragedy. Because he doesn't feel like having to exude sympathy and respect all the time.

He doesn't want to treat her like a victim. Paul knows there's going to come a time when he's going to need to yell at her and use harsh words and curse and tell her to suck it up soldier, because we're saving the whole damn planet.

He stares down at the zat that he's about to set down on the ground with the other weapons. The idea is to put them in a line up and make Amy memorize them and all their details before she ever puts her hands on one.

But Paul looks at her, standing with her hands clasped together in front of her, watching him. She looks young and a little scared and completely out of place in fatigues. She looks small. Smaller than Jack, and she's actually taller than he is. She doesn't have his gusto to give her presence anything resembling the automatic command that Jack has. Or even Hailey. Hailey's about her size, but at least she has arrogance and more intelligence than one person has a right to.

If Paul saw her in a movie, he'd give her three scenes before the psycho killer finished her off. He wouldn't peg her as the one who survived.

She survived a virus, sure, but Paul can't be sure she had anything to do with it. Maybe she got lucky.

Paul is beginning to understand what Jack was thinking when he told Amy not to use her powers.

At some point, Amy has to be strong enough. They have to make her strong enough, because all the bridges that would've taken them back to Earth went down in flames a while back.

So he presses the zat to extend it and points it at her.

She trusts him enough so that she doesn't flinch, doesn't move.

"This is the first thing you need to know about weapons," Paul says.

He fires at her.

Amy flinches, throws her arms up to block the shot and falls backwards into a sitting position.

Paul's entire vision becomes dominated by electric blue.

Then the deep, deep black that comes with unconsciousness.